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East Texas Garden Lecture Series to Feature SFA Gardens Horticulturist on Pollinators

Posted on : November 7, 2017

Tyler, Texas — The Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service in Smith County will continue its 2017 East Texas Garden Lecture Series at 9 a.m. Saturday, November 11 at the Tyler Rose Garden, 420 Rose Park Drive in Tyler, Texas. Dawn Stover, SFA Gardens horticulturist will present “Designed Communities—Planting for Pollinators in a Post Wild World.”

Dawn Stover is a Research Associate with SFA Gardens at Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches. Dawn earned a B.S. in Biology from West Texas A&M in 1996, and an M.S. in Horticulture from Stephen F. Austin State University in 1999. Her initial horticultural experience began as a propagator at Treesearch Farms in Houston, Texas. From there she entered graduate school at SFA and continued her horticultural experience in the Forestry Department with Dr. Shiyou Li’s Camptotheca acuminata research project, and later with the Agriculture Department at the SFA Mast Arboretum.

As a Research Associate since 1999, Dawn is the senior staff member of SFA Gardens. She currently maintains the living plant collection within the SFA Mast Arboretum. She is responsible for maintenance of the arboretum and the horticulture greenhouse facilities. She is responsible for two increasingly successful sales annually that raise money for the arboretum, as well as coordinating student workers and volunteers. Very often, she can be found teaching labs for horticulture students and lecturing to a wide variety of gardening enthusiasts in the region. She also serves as editor of Garden News, a quarterly newsletter published for Arboretum members, and on occasion writes for other garden related publications. As part of her research responsibilities, Dawn trials a wide range of herbaceous plant materials and disseminates information within the horticulture industry as well as the gardening public. She is a popular speaker on a wide range of gardening topics. She is also an Instructor of Record in the Department of Agriculture at SFA, teaching a course in Annuals and Perennials on a biennial basis. Dawns current interest is native bees and other imperiled pollinators.

Registration for the lecture begins at 8:30 a.m. with the program beginning at 9 a.m. in the Rose Room. Tickets are $15 per person and may be purchased at the door or in advance at the Smith County AgriLife Extension office (Cotton Belt Building), 1517 W. Front St. Suite 116 in Tyler. Each attendee will receive a complimentary Texas Gardener magazine and a copy of Scott Ogden’s Moonlit Garden book.

The lecture series is a collaborative effort between the Smith County AgriLife Extension Environmental Horticulture Committee, the Smith County Master Gardeners, and the city of Tyler water department.

For more information about the lecture series, call the Smith County AgriLife Extension office at 903-590-2980 or email greg.grant@ag.tamu.edu.

Written by The Arbor Gate
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